British campaigner urges UN to accept “ecocide” as international crime
Some British lawyer thinks that the UN or another undemocratic body ought to have the right to try someone for crimes against “peace”, which would apparently include crimes against non-humans too: you know, harm to flat-fish, garden-variety weeds, fungus, and algae.
It’s easy to imagine the “law” descending into high farce: People call for trials of oil CEO’s for raising CO2 levels; the price of energy rises. People in Scotland build tidal energy generators; Children in Mongolia freeze, and kids in Bolivia can’t afford to go to school. The tidal energy generators go on to destroy the habitat of the yellow bellied mud lark; the Bolivian kids go on to become cocaine farmers; the Mongolian kids don’t go on to become anything, and the UN calls for trials of the people who called for trials of the oil CEOs.
Supporters of a new ecocide law also believe it could be used to prosecute “climate deniers” who distort science and facts to discourage voters and politicians from taking action to tackle global warming and climate change.
Trials for people who twist, deny, and distort science? Bring it on, I say. Skeptical science would triumph in any court where real evidence was cross-examined. And people might find that the real deniers on trial are those who ignore hundreds of studies and thousands of boreholes, and defend statistically inept graphs, all while receiving funds from the public they are supposedly serving. The real deniers who claim that committee reports are evidence could be also held accountable for business malinvestments, gross misdirection of public funds, and children who starved as biofuels ate their food.
People who, say, banned the use of pesticides to save a few birds, and ended up killing lots of children, might have to face justice.
As I say, bring it on, but only in a trial by jury in a democratic country. To give powers to jail or fine people to an agency so unaccountable, so undemocratic, and so corrupted is hand-feeding a tyranny. It’s hypocrisy-democracy. The people who vote there are not elected, nor are they all appointed by elected governments. There is not even a shadow of democracy left when many of those who vote are the representatives of abject tyrants and bloodthirsty dictators.
When people must get their way but can’t convince us with polite conversation, all that’s left is force or trickery. Jail them.
H/t to Curt.